Category Archives: software

Apple has a nice system for following detailed stats about your App’s sales. I was happy to see the there were some sales in the first week! But most interesting was that there were sales all around the world, in every continent (except Antarctica).

I decided an iPad app would be an excellent way to implement some patient education ideas. And I wanted to do the design, content creation, and coding myself. This was all new to me, and I wanted to remember what I was learning and doing, so I am keeping a hand written notebook, now up to 129 full pages and counting.

Artwork and animations were done with a program called Animate from Toon Boom Animation. This is a high level, very sophisticated, and somewhat expensive program, but it turned out to be a great choice. Each scene is created in vector format, so I could then easily export bitmap images at any resolution, which was very helpful to experiment with how different sizes might fit best on the screen. This also makes it easier to duplicate images at different resolutions for standard vs retina display screens. A Wacom tablet is essential to get the most out of Animate.

I used a program called Acorn for manipulating bitmap images, creating custom buttons and labels, etc. Acorn is a very nice substitute for Photoshop, much less expensive and easier to use. Every Mac user should have this app.

The content creation for the iPad app is mostly done. However, my plan is to add more in future version.